Pronouns: Types and Definitions

From Warriners English Grammar and Composition, Complete Course ©1982

I. A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun or of more than one noun.

Example: Anglers complained about the weather forecast. They said it had not warned them of the
storm. [The pronouns they and them take the place of a noun anglers. The pronoun it takes the place
of the noun forecast.]
Sometimes a pronoun takes the place of another pronoun.
Example: One of the film projectors is broken. It has been sent out for repair. [The pronoun it takes
the place of the pronoun it.]
The word to which a pronoun refers (whose place it takes) is the antecedent of the pronoun.
II. Types
a. Personal Pronouns take the place of nouns – either common or proper – that refer to people.

I We
You You
He/she/it They

b. Possessive pronouns always act as adjectives because they give information that limits the noun
that follows.
My, mine Our, ours
Your, yours Your, yours
His, her/hers, its Their/theirs

c. Reflexive pronouns are possessive pronouns combined with –self or –selves.

i. Can be used to refer back to an acting subject (Example: Carmen hurt herself.)
ii. Can be used to intensify or emphasize a preceding noun or pronoun (Example: Jeff
himself was not hurt.)
Myself Ourselves
Yourself Yourselves
Himself/herself/itself Themselves

d. Relative pronouns are used to introduce subordinate clauses. (Remember that subordinate clauses
are groups of words with both a subject and a verb that are not complete sentences because they
do not express a complete thought.)
i. The following sentences have relative pronouns bolded to signal the start of a
subordinate clause. Identify all subjects and verbs in these sentences (means there will be
more than one actor doing more than one thing):
1. The people who live there are on vacation.
2. The copy that I read was from the library.
3. Do you know the woman whose car was stolen?
ii. Relative and interrogative pronouns are the same words. Which category a word fits into
is dependent upon context (i.e., how it is behaving in a given sentence).
e. Interrogative pronouns are used in questions. (Example: Who wrote Wuthering Heights?)
 Who Which Whose
Whom What

f. Demonstrative pronouns point out people or things.

This That
These Those

Example: That is an excellent question.

g. Indefinite pronouns are pronouns that do not fall into any of the previous categories. Most express
the idea of quantity.
All Each Most Other
Another Either Neither Several
Any Everybody Nobody Some
Anybody Everyone None Somebody
Anyone Few No one Someone
Both Many One Such

Example: All of us are here.

III. Exercise. Number your paper 1-10. After the number of each sentence, write in order the pronouns in
the sentence.
a. Last year our school gave two photography courses, neither of which had been offered before. (3)
b. The course that I took dealt with the ways in which people perceive their environment. (4)
c. Most of us block out our everyday surroundings, ignoring details which we have learned to take
for granted. (5)
d. You can prove to yourselves how blind all of us become to our surroundings. (5)
e. Which of you, upon returning home from a trip, suddenly notices how different all of the rooms
look to you? (4)
f. Some of your possessions may look unfamiliar to you, and a few of them may seem totally alien.
(5)
g. Eventually, the impression of newness wears off, and your house takes on its familiar appearance.
(2)
h. Each of us can regain the ability to see freshly if we make full use of our sense of sight. (4)
i. We must see the shapes of the objects themselves instead of thinking about their function. (3)
j. According to Claude Monet, a French impressionist painter whose works are world-famous, in
order to see as an artist, we must forget the names of the things that we are looking at. (4)
IV. Review Exercise. Now go back through the sentences and underline all the nouns in each sentence.
(Your should have 32 nouns.)